September 8, 2005

[Thompson's biographer Douglas] Brinkley writes, "February was always the cruelest month for Hunter S. Thompson. An avid NFL fan, Hunter traditionally embraced the Super Bowl in January as the high- water mark of his year. February, by contrast, was doldrums time."

That puts Thompson in a new light.

The whole text of the note appears at the link, including his final sentence, written before shooting himself in the head: "This won't hurt."

7 comments:

My freshman year of college (1984) I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and became a fan for life. I didn't agree (politically)with a lot of what he wrote, but he was, in the best sense, like a literary car accident: You simply HAD to look. I had a shot of Wild Turkey the night he died in his honor and if I had lived outside a city, would have squeezed off a few from my AR-15 in his honor.

Bottom line: Hunter Thompson was a disturbed, self-absorbed, brilliant nut case. I used to read his stuff in 'Rolling Stone.' He was both clever and inane. His journalism rarely approximated reality, probably because he so feared and loathed reality. His death was tragic but, given his self-absorption, probably predictable.

"Frances and Courtney, I'll be at your altar. Please keep going Courtney, for Frances for her life will be so much happier without me. I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU."Suicide note.~~ Kurt Cobain, musician, d. April 8, 1994

(looks like Courtney hasn't exactly been following his advice)

and as far as frequency of famous suicides well you can go back as far as Socrates and work your way up and if you include the suicidally self destructive (like say, Kerouac) that list could get quite long, clearly from the note and his other writings Thompson didn't expect to make it out of the 1970s let alone 80s or 90s so all those extra years were an embarrassment rather than a pleasure (similar to Dorothy Parker's fate, though she didn't commit suicide)